


i don't want to rest in peace, we can haunt each other's dreams

by callunavulgari



Category: EOS 10 (Podcast)
Genre: Dreams, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: In the dream, Ryan wakes up and Akmazian is there.





	i don't want to rest in peace, we can haunt each other's dreams

**Author's Note:**

> i set out to write sloppy porn and accidentally set myself up for tragic musings on hot makeouts. whoops.

The first time Ryan dreams of _him_ after the event, he wakes covered in a thin layer of sweat. His heart knocks against his ribcage - a steady gallop that leaves him heaving for breath in the quiet dark. His fingers have gone white-knuckled around his bedsheets, and for a moment he just sits, eyes closed.

Ryan can still feel him. It’s an echo - an impossible ghost of a touch - half memory, half dream. It isn’t _real_.

It doesn’t stop him from wanting.

He goes back to bed, and the next night, he has the dream again.

The dream starts the same the second time. Ryan wakes up in a dark room, and there’s a figure at the end of his bed. That part is the memory.

In the dream, Ryan wakes up and Akmazian is there.

It takes him a good long minute for his sleepy eyes to make sense of what he’s seeing - that the figure standing at the end of his bed isn’t just a ghost or a phantom of his imagination, but real, shrouded in a very familiar cloak. He blinks once and shakes his head to clear the fog.

“Lights,” he snaps, and tries to get his glower right as the interface takes its damn time getting them on, dialing them up at a glacial pace and then halting the process at a step just above _dim_. They flicker once, like they're laughing at him. He doesn’t have to fake the frown that he directs at the ceiling.

Traitor.

When he turns back, Akmazian is still there, slouched against Ryan’s desk with a purring Morpheus cuddled happily into his arms. His cloak is still on, the hood thrown up over his head - like maybe he’d never intended to stay here long enough for Ryan to wake up. He certainly looks the part of the surprised intruder, his mouth a slash of guilt in the gloom.

“What are you doing here?” Ryan sighs in his best put upon voice, pushing himself up onto his elbows. His mouth is dry and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. He is _tired_.

Akmazian swallows visibly, his eyes flicking from Ryan’s bare chest to his very unamused face.

“Ah,” he says, and stops.

Ryan stares at him.

Akmazian’s face is doing something strange, his expression twisting, jaw working like he’s worrying at the inside of his lip. He pets Morpheus methodically, like he’s forgotten that he’s doing it, and as Ryan watches, his eyes dart down to the floor for entire _seconds_ before his gaze is dragged back again, like Akmazian can’t _help_ looking at Ryan.

“Seriously?” Ryan asks, pushing himself all the way up into a sitting position, folding his legs beneath the sheets. He crosses his arms across his chest. “You break into my room, watch me while I sleep, and you - _you_ \- have nothing to say about it.”

Akmazian gives him a sheepish smile, and sets the cat down on the desk, giving him one last luxurious pet from head to tail.

“Sorry,” he says at last, fidgeting with his cloak. “Didn’t realize you’d be sleepin’.”

Ryan gives him an incredulous look. “It’s-” he glances at the clock next to his bed, “-0300. And you didn’t think I’d be asleep?”

Akmazian shrugs. “Turns out we don’t have clocks in the cargo bay.”

Ryan snorts. “Okay. Let’s pretend for one second that I believe you. You didn’t think I’d be sleeping, so you snuck into my room, saw that I was asleep, and just, what? Thought you’d stick around for a while?”

Akmazian gives Ryan an injured look, crossing his arms. He looks uncomfortable. “There was the cat. He distracted me.”

“He... distracted you.”

There’s a moment there, that exists in that nebulous space of could-have-beens and what-ifs, where he thinks that Akmazian might admit to it. That he’d been watching Ryan sleep. That his story might have been true. That he came to Ryan’s room, got distracted by the cat, then got distracted by Ryan himself.

“Yes,” Akmazian insists, an edge to his voice. He sneers, lip curling back to reveal a flash of white teeth. “You’re pretty, darlin’. But I got standards.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow, and for a moment, he wants. Wildly. He doesn’t know what he wants, but he wants it.

“Standards, huh?” he says, and without warning, kicks his legs out over the side of the bed. His room isn’t very large. It takes less than seven steps to cross the span of it, from bed to desk to door to bathroom. He makes it to Akmazian in five, delighting in the way that his dark eyes go wide, his gaze dropping to Ryan’s navel before it jerks back up again.

Up close, it’s harder to miss that Akmazian is _nervous_. At Ryan’s approach, he draws back in on himself, the lip of the desk digging into his lower back in a way that surely can’t be pleasant. The fabric of his cloak makes a soft sound as it brushes against Ryan’s bare legs. It’s softer than he thought it would be, made from a cloth that seems to be both warm and comfortable. Ryan had always thought it would be scratchy, like an uncomfortable sweater.

Akmazian licks his lips, and without thinking, Ryan mirrors him.

He’s so close that he can smell him, can feel the warmth of his body, the tension quivering between them.

“Do you?” he asks, glancing up at Akmazian from beneath lowered lashes.

“Do I-” Akmazian clears his throat, his gaze eating up Ryan’s skin - a constant flicker of motion - one moment dipping down to rest lovingly on his collarbone, then down further, to his stomach, then back to his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “Do I what?”

Ryan bites down on a smile, and takes another daring step forward. “Do you have standards?”

Akmazian blinks, then groans, slumping back against the desk. He looks at Ryan, and while there’s a hint of good humor, there’s also something else. Resignation, maybe. Disappointment. He laughs it off, flicking his cloak to the side, a sardonic little grin on his face, but it’s there.

“You know me, darlin’,” he says, and it sounds like a joke, but it rings true. Ryan does know him. He knows Akmazian - knows that he’s good down to the heavy muscle of his heart, knows that he’s been dealt a shitty hand in life and that he’d live that shit all over again to have the world know the truth.

Ryan _knows_ him. Maybe that’s why he does it.

Akmazian makes a lovely, startled little noise in the back of his throat when Ryan takes both hands and draws Akmazian down to meet him, his fingers sliding into the spaces where his jaw’s gone slack. He strokes there, hesitantly, with his thumbs, and when he tugs Akmazian forward those last few inches, he is utterly sure of what he wants.

Akmazian’s lips are dry and a little chapped, but they’re plush and part easily around a groan when Ryan takes the kiss deeper, makes it a little wetter, a little more wanting. The room is quiet around them, this little echoing piece of space that is theirs alone. He can hear his own breathing, soft but steady, and Akmazian’s over that, just a little uneven. He lets out a quiet groan as his entire body relaxes into the kiss, slumping forward into Akmazian’s arms, pressing closer until they’re both half on, half off of the desk. He kisses slow and deep and a little bit sloppy, until his lips feel bruised and wet. His eyes drift closed and when Akmazian lets out a soft murmur, Ryan tips his head back to make room for Akmazian’s mouth on his throat.

He can be greedy for this, Ryan thinks as Akmazian leaves a trail of kisses up the length of his throat. He’s _allowed_ to want this.

When he pulls back, Akmazian is looking at him with faint wonder. His hand reaches out to touch the curve of Ryan’s cheek.

“Darlin’,” he breathes, and swallows hard around the words that might have come next.

And this, see- _this_ is the place where the dream strays. Where memory becomes want, where it becomes desire, and wishes, and could-have-fucking-beens.

Because in this dream, Ryan smiles and presses forward, until they’re tangled together. The dream blurs, becoming wet lips and the near silent rustle of a cloak hitting the floor. In the dream, Ryan tugs Akmazian back to bed, and climbs down on top of him. Makes him say, ‘darlin’ again - once, twice, and maybe a time or two more.

In the dream, Ryan is not afraid.

In the dream, Ryan does not say goodnight, gentling the words with another kiss.

In the dream, Ryan doesn’t say goodnight at all.

In the dream, they fall asleep together.

The dream slips through his fingers like smoke, like the ghost of a person who never quite got the chance to exist, except in dreams like this one - half memory, half want.

Ryan wakes up and he is alone.

 

 


End file.
